A Sick Cosmic Joke
by KyliaQuilor
Summary: When Buffy sees Faith and Angel in bed together, she wants it to be some sick cosmic joke at her expense. Unfortunately, no, not so much.


This fic was written for fangel, who was one of the five winners picked for the 400 Followers Oneshot Giveaway I did on Tumblr. Her specific request was, and I'll quote: "I HAVE TO GO WITH FANGEL AND BUFFY AND JUST ANGST IT UP. IS THAT ENOUGH OF A PROMPT? LMFAO I'M SORRY. JUST BRING ME PAIN BASICALLY." Hopefully I Have delivered the proper amounts of angst and pain.

Timeline wise, this is post- BTVS and post AtS. The specifics are irrelevant to the main thrust of the story.

If you are a Bangel shipper, this really isn't the fic for you.

* * *

It was amazing the things the brain paid attention to when you were trying to avoid thinking about – avoid processing – what was right in front of your eyes. When you were trying to avoid seeing the man you still loved - the man you've _always_ loved – in bed with another woman.

Especially when that other woman was _Faith._ (Had she been in a more rational state of mind, Buffy would never have thought about Faith that particular level of vitriol in her mental tone. They were by this point friends, sister Slayers… but right now, Buffy was in no state to be remotely charitable to Faith. Or really to feel anything but anger and disgust… envy and even hate.)

Buffy opened her mouth, but no words came out as she looked at the two of them. She couldn't even –

Angel had covered himself up with part of the blanket, and wasn't quite looking at her, but she couldn't read the expression on his face. Faith, on the other hand, had the decency to actually look a little ashamed, but wasn't covering herself at all.

"Buffy," Angel started slowly. "I didn't know you were going to be in town…"

" _Obviously_ ," Buffy spat. "Though from the looks of things that wouldn't have changed your plans."

"B-" Faith started, but Buffy shook her head.

"If you apologize, I will beat you to death," Buffy snarled, intentionally echoing those words she'd said to Faith all those years ago in Los Angeles. Faith flinched, and Angel just looked at her, his entire expression carefully blank.

"She doesn't need to apologize," Angel replied firmly, "neither of us do."

"She doesn't need to apologize?" Buffy laughed in derision, barely able to believe Angel was saying it. _Then again..._ "She was having sex with you."

"And I was having sex with her," Angel pointed out. "We're two consenting adults. It's not your business. What are you even doing here, Buffy? Last I heard, you were in Europe."

"Really, I walk in on you _fucking_ Faith and that's what you're going to bother with?!" Buffy shot back, feeling her throat clench a little as he asked her why she was here. Reminded her of why she'd come all this way.

Why she'd spent three months tracking down an ancient book, a 'Treatise on the Soul'. Why she'd given it to Willow, and why Willow had devised a way to permenantly anchor Angel's soul. A way to make it so she and Angel could be together, finally. Willow was already on her way with the implements for the spell.

She'd tried to move on from Angel. Tried and tried and tried again. It had never worked. And now...

"Tell me this is some sick joke, _please._ " Buffy pleaded, taking a step back, unable hide behind anger anymore. "Tell me... tell me..." _Tell me you didn't move on._ She'd heard that Angel and Cordelia had almost had a thing... but it had never happened, and... Buffy had always rationalized it as just... Angel trying to move on from her, the way she had with Riley, with Spike, with the Immortal.

But seeing this... seeing them...

"It's not," Faith said slowly. Buffy wanted to disblieve Faith. Wanted to think the look on her face, the tone of her voice... the passion she'd heard in her cries as she'd walked into the bedroom and seen them _fucking_ was all an act.

Faith loved Angel.

And...

Buffy looked at Angel, eyes wide, silently begging him, god, the universe... _someone_ to tell her this was all a lie. An act. That Angel... that Angel hadn't moved on. That Angel wasn't...

All her hopes were dashed, crushed under the weight of reality by Angel's next words:

"I love Faith, Buffy," He told her. Every word felt like a knife to her heart. She stepped back again, shaking her head.

"No. No," the room felt small, constricting, her heart was beating faster in her chest. "This isn't happening. You can't – you don't love her. If you did... Angelus... the curse..." She latched onto that idea... as long as the curse was still unchanged, his soul un-anchored... he couldn't love her. He couldn't love Faith, or else...

"This isn't perfect happiness, Buffy," Faith replied. "Did you really think it was just sex that did it?" She laughed a moment, then looked down. "Of course, so did he for the longest time."

"A friend once pointed out to me that 99.9 'Ad infinitum' of relationships didn't include perfect happiness. And he was right," Angel said, leaning a bit off the bed to grab his pants, which he pulled on under the covers. Buffy's eyes were on the vampire, but out of the corner of her eye she saw Faith grab a shirt that had been carelessly cast aside. "If you're lucky, you encounter that once in your life, probably in someone else's relationship." Angel stood up, now at least half-dressed.

"So what... you're just using Faith as a consolation prize?"

"Don't sound so fucking hopeful, B," Faith commented, all hint of apology gone from her voice.

"What we had _was_ special, Buffy," Angel admitted. "I loved you that way – a singular experience I'll never repeat. It was... perfect happiness."

Buffy felt the knives again, cutting at her, all over, inside... she wished they were real. Wished she could stab herself now, stop the pain.

It had been Angel. It had always been Angel. She'd never thought she could... never thought she could be with him, spend her life with him, until Willow had discovered a passing reference to that book and the magic within it. And even until she'd found it, and Willow had confirmed it would work as it was supposed to, that the book did have what they needed...

And now it didn't matter.

Angel was speaking in the past tense.

"You don't..." Buffy couldn't get the words out, tars starting to slide unbidden down her cheeks. "You don't -" she couldn't get them out. If she didn't say them they weren't true. If she didn't say them...

"I don't," Angel nodded. "And... I thought you didn't either." _How!? How could you think that!? How could you think I could ever stop loving you!? You were my soulmate!_ But she couldn't get the questions out, couldn't scream them at her like she wanted to. She couldn't demand answers. She couldn't do anything. "But... that doesn't change anything. I'm sorry Buffy. But I love Faith."

"If I'd known you still had feelings for him, B..." Faith started, then shook her head, "But I didn't. I wasn't trying to hurt you. But I'm not gonna apologize. I love Angel, and I'm not going to apologize for that, or for him loving me back."

" _How?_ Where did this – how did this-" Buffy started, her voice coming out, finally, but broken. She shook her head violently before either of the could respond. "No. No. I don't want to hear the answer." Taking another step back, Buffy left the bedroom, then turned around fully, racing for the front door of Angel's home. She barely had the presence of mind to grab the bag she'd dropped just inside as she'd walked in, but she did manage it. And then she ran. And ran. The quarter moon was high in a star-filled night sky, but she didn't notice. She didn't notice anything as she ran, just running.

Running from the pain, which she couldn't leave.

Running from the man she loved, who was still there, in her heard, broken and bleeding as it was.

Running from a reality that was nothing like her fantasies.

She ran and ran and ran until she could no more. As cliché as that sounded. As and as a Slayer... there was a lot of ground she could cover until she could run no more.

She was... somewhere. Apartment buildings loomed around her, a few broken street lights suggesting she wasn't in the best part of down, but that hardly counted as a problem for her. A small part of her even hoped someone tried to mug her. Or even succeeded. Right now, in this moment, dying sounded very appealing. Her hear was already trying to escape from her chest. What was left of her heart anyway.

Her back against an exterior wall, Buffy dropped to the ground, sliding downwards.

On the way back to the States, in her plane...

She'd been so excited, couldn't sleep on the red eye. Unable to stop thinking about Angel. About how he'd react to the news his soul could be permanently anchored. About them finally rekindling their relationship.

She hadn't been so naive as to think they could just pick up where they'd left off, but... at the same time, she'd been happy that she'd felt... like she was in high school again. She'd been so far gone into... giddiness that she'd actually written her name and Angel's surrounded by a heart all over a notebook while on the plane.

Now it felt like some sort of sick cosmic joke. But it wasn't a joke. It was a reality she didn't want to know.

"He doesn't love me anymore," She said to the empty, uncaring world.

She'd been so... happy... it made all of this so much worse.


End file.
